


god have mercy on our youth

by perennials



Series: horatio [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, atsumu learns about Communication (you go atsumu), i just realized this but i guess he comes out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: His mother asks him questions over the phone: can Hinata cook? Does he smoke? Does he have a girlfriend? Atsumu kicks his feet up on the coffee table and stares at the ceiling. Yes, Hinata can cook. They’re professional athletes, none of them smokes. No, he doesn’t have a girlfriend.He doesn’t have a girlfriend, Atsumu thinks mildly. But he has me.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Series: horatio [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639897
Comments: 74
Kudos: 1435
Collections: atsuhina! 🦊💫☀️





	god have mercy on our youth

**Author's Note:**

> cw: heteronormativity and clunky family ties  
> spoiler: it ends well  
> if you read my previous atsuhina: this may give you whiplash
> 
> [SOMEONE MADE PODFIC. GOD BLESS OUR YOUTH](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22753792)

Atsumu lies to his parents about Shouyou.

They’ve just rented their first apartment in Ebisu. It’s small and creaky and twenty minutes from their training facility by train. Fifteen minutes if you hurry. There’s one bedroom and one queen-sized bed and a kotatsu, which Akaashi’s parents donated.

Atsumu’s parents are turning sixty this year. His mother asks him questions over the phone: can Hinata cook? Does he smoke? Does he have a girlfriend? Atsumu kicks his feet up on the coffee table and stares at the ceiling. Yes, Hinata can cook. They’re professional athletes, none of them smokes. No, he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

He doesn’t have a girlfriend, Atsumu thinks mildly. But he has me.

He doesn’t tell his mother that. He doesn’t say anything when she tells him he should find himself a girlfriend. His mother wants the best for him, even if she doesn’t know what he wants. She wants the best for him exactly because she doesn’t know what he wants. He wants her to stop asking him to let her come see his new apartment. The journey would be bad for her back. She would be pissed at the way he’s set up the clothesline on the balcony anyway, though he doesn’t tell her that either.

“Hey.” Shouyou leans over him, casting a long shadow on the sofa. He kisses Atsumu’s forehead.

Atsumu fits his fingers around Shouyou’s chin and pulls him down for a proper kiss. “Hey yourself,” he says, smiling up at him.

His phone slips into the crack between the cushions. He lets it.

  
  


::

  
  


Sakusa graces their apartment with his holy presence two weeks after they move in. He’s wearing a hazmat suit which he rented from the mall. The backseat of his car is piled high with cleaning supplies.

“What do you mean you can rent hazmat suits at the mall,” Atsumu asks. He’s standing in a designated three-by-three square in the living room while Sakusa vacuums the floor. He keeps telling Sakusa he should invest in one of those robotic vacuum cleaners that people treat like pets; Sakusa prefers more traditional cleaning methods. He’s going to mop the floor after he vacuums it, then sit in their kitchen and make cocktails for himself while everything dries. It’s his way of showing affection.

He ignores Atsumu. This is also a way of showing affection.

Atsumu tries again. “What did you buy a car for, actually?”

“Public transport disgusts me,” Sakusa says.

“Huh.” Atsumu studies his nails. “Do I disgust you?”

Sakusa looks at him blandly. It’s a miracle he can make out Sakusa’s expression at all, given his budget rental hazmat suit has a three-inch wide slit for his eyes and is the color of cat pee. His posture is rigid. But Sakusa’s posture is always rigid unless he’s playing volleyball.

“You disappoint me because you refuse to buy a dishwasher.” He turns off the vacuum cleaner and goes to pull the plug. “Please buy a dishwasher.”

  
  


::

  
  


Atsumu doesn’t buy a dishwasher. He buys cauliflower and eggs and milk at the supermarket near their apartment in Ebisu. On his way home he catches sight of one of the Black Jackals’ games in a storefront television set. The camera is glued to Shouyou’s form as he jumps, swings his arm, sends the ball thundering into the opponent’s court.

They’ve been playing volleyball for a while now. What happens when they can’t play volleyball anymore? What will he tell his parents to appease them when he doesn’t settle down with a wife and three kids in a big house with a garden in the backyard?

The crowd goes wild on the screen. Shouyou smiles sharply into the camera like he’s just won, though he hasn’t yet. Shouyou looks him straight in the eye.

Atsumu doesn’t know why he’s been feeling so strange about everything lately. He looks away.

  
  


::

  
  


Akaashi and Bokuto moved out of their old apartment last year. Their new place is a twenty-minute walk from the closest train station, but the ceiling is two stories high and the bathtub is the size of a small swimming pool.

One time, when he and Shouyou were fighting, Atsumu crashed at their place. He doesn’t remember what they fought about but it was very late by the time he arrived. He had yelled at so many potted plants on the way over that his voice was half-gone and his throat hurt. Akaashi gave him a mug of hot chrysanthemum tea. Bokuto held him by the shoulders and looked into his eyes and said very seriously, “You can come to me for anything. I’m strong. I’ll beat them up.”

Atsumu smiled at him even though he was very tired. “Please don’t beat him up.”

Later he followed Akaashi into the bathroom. The white ceramic bathtub was full and the mirror was foggy with steam. Akaashi squatted down and opened the cabinet under the sink.

“Bath bombs,” said Akaashi, who was suddenly an aromatherapist. “Pick one.”

The bath bomb he picked turned all the water in the bathtub gold. He sat in the tub and watched as the glitter moved around his knees, his elbows, his chest. Shouyou would like this. Shouyou was not here. He closed his eyes and submerged his head in the water. Then he got out and called Shouyou. He was sorry. He had locked Atsumu’s apartment before leaving. Atsumu lay face-down on the blanket in Bokuto and Akaashi’s spare room and fell asleep with the lights on.

He left early the next morning, before breakfast. Then he walked to Shouyou’s place with Google Maps and a power bank plugged into his phone. There was a crick in his neck he couldn’t quite shake out.

“You smell like flowers,” Shouyou said, standing in his doorway and looking like an LED lightshow. Was he forgiven? What had he been mad about in the first place? He couldn’t remember.

“Akaashi let me use one of his bath bombs,” Atsumu said. Then he let Shouyou pull him into his apartment, locking the door quietly behind them.

  
  


::

  
  


Shouyou likes grilled salmon and eggs over rice and miso soup with extra tofu. His favorite brand of eggs is from Miyagi. There’s only one store in Tokyo that sells them. It’s run by an old couple that lives in the apartment upstairs with three cats and a budgie. It’s closed on Thursdays.

Shouyou likes roasted cauliflower and freshly-baked bread and tuna mayonnaise. He taught himself how to cook in Brazil. They bought him a bread machine when he turned twenty-four and ever since then he’s brought loaves sporadically to practice. Even Sakusa consents to this. He folds his surgical mask into his pocket and says it’s good bread. It’s good bread Hinata. But can you wash your fucking hands before you touch it. Hinata.

Atsumu knows the right ratio of rice to water to put in the rice cooker, but he can’t use a stove to save his life. He wants to be more useful but Shouyou says he likes cooking, likes telling Atsumu what to cut and where to put it. Likes putting on music in the background while he waltzes around the kitchen with a knife and a Hello Kitty apron tied around his waist. Atsumu can’t say anything. He likes watching Shouyou when he's happy. It makes him happy too.

“I’m surprised you haven’t killed anyone yet,” says Osamu, inspecting the aloe vera plant on the balcony. He’s in the city to check on the branch stores that opened last month.

“Mm.” Atsumu rearranges the pillows on the sofa. Osamu hangs his arms over the balcony railing.

“How’s it going?”

Atsumu ignores him. “How’s it going for you?”

“Good, good,” Osamu says mildly, watching the streets below. A sharp wind blows by and makes his jacket billow up around his waist.

Osamu has a girlfriend. She’s taller than him and looks like she could beat Ushijima up. She works as a fitness instructor. During the New Year she visited their parents with Osamu and Atsumu shook her hand. He saw the way his mother’s expression melted like snow when his girlfriend punched Osamu in the shoulder and Osamu touched her hair. He knows what it means to them.

“That’s good,” Atsumu repeats. He rearranges the pillows on the sofa again and then lies down on top of everything and stares at the ceiling. Osamu waves at someone on the street.

  
  


::

  
  


“I want to get married,” he realizes.

Shouyou is asleep in bed beside him. His back is to the wall and his bangs are falling over his eyes. There’s an ambulance singing in the distance but their room is quiet and small and the darkness hugs his shoulders. Atsumu touches Shouyou’s eyelashes, his cheeks, the side of his face.

Fuck. He’s twenty-six. He wants to get married.

  
  


::

  
  


The things he does to appease his parents are many. They were the ones who raised him, after all. He feels like he owes them something, even though he let Osamu have the last ice cream bar when they were eight; even though he studied biology instead of history in high school; even though he kept the computer mouse his dad bought him that was incompatible with his laptop, in a corner of his bookshelf behind a stack of magazines.

The things he does to appease his parents have piled up over the years in a small room in his rib cage labeled “THINGS YOU CAN’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT”. But what about the things he does to appease himself? What about the shit he wants?

What about him?

  
  


::

  
  


“LET ME IN ATSUMU. YOUR MOTHER IS DYING.”

“NO.”

Shouyou looks at him sympathetically, his fingers loose around Atsumu’s wrist. “You should let her in.”

It’s March. His sixty-year-old mother is standing outside his apartment in a faux leather coat and platforms. She didn’t tell him she was coming; he isn’t prepared for this.

“I’M CALLING THE POLICE.”

Shouyou squeezes his wrist. Atsumu swipes a hand over his face and sighs. “Fine.”

He opens the door. His mother breezes in with the cold air and sweeps them up in her powdered arms. She smells like flowers.

“ATSUMU DEAR. HINATA DEAR. IT’S BEEN SO LONG.” Has she even met Shouyou before? Maybe during one of their games. He’s lost track of things over the years; it’s possible.

She’ll see the bedroom soon enough. Atsumu holds his breath and waits.

  
  


::

  
  


To: [ m_atsumu@gmail.com ](mailto:m_atsumu@gmail.com)

From: [ sayoko1969@hotmail.com ](mailto:sayoko1969@hotmail.com)

Subject: Belated Congratulations

  
  


Dear Atsumu,

Thank you for sharing your new home with me on Sunday. It is lovely. So is Hinata.

Your father and I have always wanted the best for you. Along the way, we stopped asking for your input and started making assumptions about what that meant. It became a matter of what we wanted, not you. We’re sorry we couldn’t make our home a more welcoming place for you.

Please let Hinata know he is warmly invited to our New Year’s celebration next year. I am sure he would love to see the house you grew up in. We have kept all your things in your old bedroom.

Take care.

  
  


Love,

Sayoko

  
  


P.S. You’ve set up the clothesline wrong. I have attached an image of how to do it properly.

  
  


::

  
  


They visit Atsumu’s parents in January the following year.

Atsumu knocks rigidly on the front door of the Miya household. He takes a step back. Runs a hand through his hair.

Shuffling. Dog sounds. The door bursts open and his mother comes flying out to greet him. Shouyou sees the way her expression melts like snow when her gaze falls on Atsumu. He loves her more than he did before.

He thinks: I promise I’ll make your son happy.

He thinks: thank you for entrusting me with him.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) or [tumblr](http://corpsentry.tumblr.com/)
> 
> WELCOME TO THE SPIRITUAL SEQUEL TO MY OTHER ATSUHINA FIC. I AM SO TIRED. I DELETED SO MANY FUCKING THINGS. I WANTED TO MAKE THIS EDGY BUT I WAS LIKE CAN I REALLY MAKE HINATA SAD AND I THOUGHT ABOUT IT AND I WAS LIKE NO. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME  
> THIS IS DEFINITELY MORE ON THE NICHE SIDE SO IF YOU ACTUALLY READ IT TO THE END THANK YOU FOR DOING SO. YOU'RE A CHAMPION BY FALL OUT BOY. PLEASE CONSIDER KUDOS AND COMMENTS BUT ONLY IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL JOY. I'M VERY HAPPY TO SEE YOU HERE  
> COME YELL WITH ME ON TWITTER. IM ON TWITTER A LOT
> 
> have a good one

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [god have mercy on our youth [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22753792) by [midnightmew-podfics (midnightmew)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightmew/pseuds/midnightmew-podfics)




End file.
